Part 14 (1/2)

Rostow had hoped that the president would speak with Khrushchev in Vienna about Vietnam as another of the trouble spots that could trigger a Soviet-American confrontation. But Kennedy had scarcely mentioned Vietnam to Khrushchev in Vienna. It was not that he was indifferent to America's stake in Vietnam: Indeed, he was eager to honor promises of increased aid, and before going to Europe he had a.s.sured Saigon's foreign minister that he intended to increase the size of MAAG, even though this meant violating the 1954 Geneva Accords. However, limited appropriations for foreign military aid and Diem's resistance to pressure for economic and political reforms had sidetracked these commitments.

Nevertheless, throughout the summer of 1961, while the Berlin crisis commanded most of the president's attention, planning for increased aid to Vietnam went forward. Kennedy authorized a Special Financial Group under the direction of Eugene A. Staley, a Stanford economist, to work with Saigon in developing means to fund South Vietnamese military, social, and economic programs.

Kennedy was reluctant to go beyond economic aid. In a White House meeting on Southeast Asia at the end of July, he responded skeptically to proposals for U.S. military intervention in southern Laos. He ”emphasized the reluctance of the American people and of many distinguished military leaders to see any direct involvement of U.S. troops in that part of the world.” Some of Kennedy's advisers ”urged that with a proper plan, with outside support, and above all with a clear and open American commitment, the results would be very different from anything that had happened before. But the President remarked that General de Gaulle, out of painful French experience, had spoken with feeling of the difficulty of fighting in that part of the world.”

After the meeting, Rostow sent Kennedy a memo summarizing his and General Taylor's understanding that ”you would wish to see every avenue of diplomacy exhausted before we accept the necessity for either positioning U.S. forces on the Southeast Asian mainland or fighting there; you would wish to see the possibilities of economic a.s.sistance fully exploited to strengthen the Southeast Asian position; you would wish to see indigenous forces used to the maximum if fighting should occur; and that, should we have to fight, we should use air and sea power to the maximum and engage minimum U.S. forces on the Southeast Asian mainland.” As a prelude to any direct involvement in Vietnam, Kennedy wanted to focus world attention on North Vietnamese aggression against Laos and Saigon. Still smarting over the embarra.s.sment to Was.h.i.+ngton from the Bay of Pigs invasion, Kennedy believed it essential to prepare public opinion to accept possible U.S. intervention-”otherwise any military action we might take against Northern Vietnam will seem like aggression on our part.” Kennedy's basic message to his advisers was that U.S. military involvement was to be a last resort.

In early August, Kennedy sent Diem a letter largely agreeing to the program of support worked out between Staley and the South Vietnamese. He promised to finance the expansion of Diem's army from 170,000 to 200,000 men, but only on the condition that Saigon had an effective plan for fighting Viet Cong subversion. Kennedy emphasized that U.S. aid was ”specifically conditioned upon Vietnamese performance with respect to particular needed reforms.” Indeed, most of Kennedy's letter focused not on U.S. military aid but on Vietnamese financial and social reforms that ”will be most effective to strengthen the vital ties of loyalty between the people of Free Viet-Nam and their government.” In this, he was returning to the argument he had made to the French in the fifties: Stable Vietnamese ties to the West depended on popular self-government. But Diem was proving as resistant to the argument as Paris had been. The South Vietnamese ruler felt that repression of dissenting opinion would save his political future better than democratization. In sticking with Diem, the administration was implicitly admitting that it saw no viable alternative.

The receding problems over Berlin, joined to the conviction that Laos-headed by an even less reliable ally than Diem-would be a poor place to take a military stand against communist aggression, had moved Kennedy to give Vietnam greater attention. And so, in his U.N. speech at the end of September, when he had reported to the a.s.sembly ”on two threats to peace,” Vietnam had come first and Germany and Berlin second. ”The first threat on which I wish to report,” he said, ”is widely misunderstood: the smoldering coals of war in Southeast Asia.” These were not ”wars of liberation” but acts of aggression against ”free countries living under their own governments.”

Kennedy's remarks at the U.N. had been a response to reports that the end of the rainy season in October would bring a major a.s.sault on South Vietnam by communist infiltrators from the North. On September 15, Rostow had advised Kennedy of Diem's belief that Hanoi was about to s.h.i.+ft from guerrilla attacks to ”open warfare.” Three days later, in response to a query from Kennedy about ”guerrilla infiltration routes through Laos into South Vietnam,” Taylor had reported a two-year increase in Viet Cong forces from twenty-five hundred to fifteen thousand, most of which had come from outside the country. In his U.N. address, Kennedy had asked ”whether measures can be devised to protect the small and the weak from such tactics. For if they are successful in Laos and South Viet Nam,” he declared, ”the gates will be opened wide.”

The pressure on Kennedy to do something about Vietnam now reached new levels. Before his Bobby-engineered ouster, Bowles had told Rusk on October 5 that an agreement on Laos would not reverse America's steadily more precarious position throughout Southeast Asia, where it faced ”a deteriorating military situation in Vietnam and a highly volatile political position in Thailand.” Diem's government, which lacked ”an effective political base,” was growing weaker, putting the communists ”in a position to rapidly increase their military pressure with every prospect for success.” Was the answer U.S. military intervention? Not surprisingly, Bowles had thought not: ”A direct military response to increased Communist pressure,” he had said, ”has the supreme disadvantage of involving our prestige and power in a remote area under the most adverse circ.u.mstances.”

The journalist Theodore White, whose skeptical writings about Chiang Kai-shek and the Chinese Nationalists during and after World War II had made him famous, sent the president a similar message. On October 11, after returning from a trip to Asia, he wrote Kennedy that ”any investment of our troops in the paddies of the [South Vietnamese] delta will, I believe, be useless-or worse. The presence of white American troops will feed the race hatred of the Viet-Namese.” He thought the U.S. would be forced into a guerrilla war that could not be won. ”This South Viet-Nam thing is a real b.a.s.t.a.r.d to solve-either we have to let the younger military officers knock off Diem in a coup and take our chances on a military regime ... or else we have to give it up. To commit troops there is unwise-for the problem is political and doctrinal.”

But most of Kennedy's advisers thought otherwise. In a paper t.i.tled ”Concept for Intervention in Viet-Nam,” U.S. military and State Department officials recommended ”the use of SEATO [Southeast Asia Treaty Organization] (primarily U.S.) Forces 'to arrest and hopefully to reverse the deteriorating situation' in Vietnam.” A force of between 22,800 and 40,000 men would be needed, it said, and if the North Vietnamese and Chinese intervened, that might have to increase to four divisions.

Although he did not openly dismiss the proposal, Kennedy was quite skeptical of military commitments that could become open-ended. At a White House meeting on October 11, he instructed Taylor, Rostow, Lansdale, and several other military and diplomatic officials to visit Vietnam. Kennedy made clear to Taylor that he preferred alternatives to sending American forces. He was willing to send a token contingent that would establish ”a U.S. 'Presence' in Vietnam,” but he wanted discussions in Saigon to focus on providing more a.s.sistance rather than U.S. combat troops. To reduce press speculation that the mission was a prelude to committing American forces, Kennedy considered announcing it as an ”economic survey.” At a press conference later that day, Kennedy described the mission as seeking ”ways in which we can perhaps better a.s.sist the Government of Viet-Nam in meeting this threat to its independence.” But despite his hopes, the press now speculated that Kennedy was preparing to send U.S. troops to Vietnam, Thailand, or Laos.

Though he did not characterize the mission as limited to economic concerns, Kennedy responded to press reports of possible U.S. military intervention by telling the New York Times New York Times off the record that American military chiefs were reluctant to send U.S. troops and that they intended instead to rely on local forces a.s.sisted by U.S. advisers. At the same time, Rusk told Budget Director Dave Bell that ”Vietnam can be critical and we would like to throw in resources rather than people if we can.” General Lyman Lemnitzer cabled Admiral Harry Felt, the commander of U.S. Pacific forces, that the increase in press reports about sending combat troops was troubling the president; he wanted the Saigon discussions to consider the use of American forces, but only if it were ”absolutely essential.” Felt agreed: The introduction of U.S. troops into Vietnam, he said, could identify America with neocolonialism, provoke a communist reaction, and involve it in extended combat. off the record that American military chiefs were reluctant to send U.S. troops and that they intended instead to rely on local forces a.s.sisted by U.S. advisers. At the same time, Rusk told Budget Director Dave Bell that ”Vietnam can be critical and we would like to throw in resources rather than people if we can.” General Lyman Lemnitzer cabled Admiral Harry Felt, the commander of U.S. Pacific forces, that the increase in press reports about sending combat troops was troubling the president; he wanted the Saigon discussions to consider the use of American forces, but only if it were ”absolutely essential.” Felt agreed: The introduction of U.S. troops into Vietnam, he said, could identify America with neocolonialism, provoke a communist reaction, and involve it in extended combat.

The Taylor-Rostow mission, which lasted from October 17 to November 2, produced a blizzard of paper on Vietnam. With rumors flying about what Taylor would recommend, Kennedy instructed him not to discuss his conclusions, ”especially those relating to U.S. forces.” Kennedy was eager to prevent leaks about military actions that he did not want to take.

TAYLOR'S FIFTY-FIVE-PAGE REPORT to the president, which represented the collective judgment of mission members from the State and Defense Departments, the Joint Chiefs, the CIA, and the intelligence division of the International Cooperation Administration (ICA), emphasized the need for an emergency program promptly implemented, including retaliation against North Vietnam if it refused to halt its aggression against the South. Taylor and his colleagues believed that more was at stake here than Vietnam-namely, the larger question of ”Khrushchev's 'wars of liberation',” or ”para-wars of guerrilla aggression. This is a new and dangerous Communist technique which bypa.s.ses our traditional political and military responses,” Taylor said. But the U.S. was anything but helpless in the face of this new kind of warfare. ”We have many a.s.sets in this part of the world,” Taylor declared, ”which, if properly combined and appropriately supported, offer high odds for ultimate success.” to the president, which represented the collective judgment of mission members from the State and Defense Departments, the Joint Chiefs, the CIA, and the intelligence division of the International Cooperation Administration (ICA), emphasized the need for an emergency program promptly implemented, including retaliation against North Vietnam if it refused to halt its aggression against the South. Taylor and his colleagues believed that more was at stake here than Vietnam-namely, the larger question of ”Khrushchev's 'wars of liberation',” or ”para-wars of guerrilla aggression. This is a new and dangerous Communist technique which bypa.s.ses our traditional political and military responses,” Taylor said. But the U.S. was anything but helpless in the face of this new kind of warfare. ”We have many a.s.sets in this part of the world,” Taylor declared, ”which, if properly combined and appropriately supported, offer high odds for ultimate success.”

The Taylor group recommended that the United States expand its role in Vietnam from advisory to a ”limited partners.h.i.+p.” U.S. representatives needed to ”partic.i.p.ate actively” in Saigon's economic, political, and military operations. ”Only the Vietnamese could defeat the Viet Cong; but at all levels Americans must, as friends and partners-not as arm's-length advisors-show them how the job might be done-not tell them or do it for them.” Most telling, Taylor's report recommended introducing a military task force of six to eight thousand men, split between combat and logistical troops operating under U.S. control, in order to raise South Vietnamese morale, give logistical support to South Vietnamese forces, ”conduct such combat operations as are necessary for self-defense,” and ”provide an emergency reserve to back up the Armed forces of the GVN [Government of Vietnam] in the case of a heightened military crisis.” The American troops could be dispatched under the fiction of helping the Vietnamese recover from a ma.s.sive flood in the Mekong Delta.

The planners also considered the possibility of ousting Diem in a South Vietnamese military coup. His regime was a cauldron of intrigue, nepotism, and corruption joined to administrative paralysis and steady deterioration. ”Persons long loyal to Diem and included in his official family now believe that South Viet Nam can get out of the present mora.s.s only if there is early and drastic revision at the top.” But the planners uniformly recommended against overthrowing the existing government. It would be dangerous, ”since it is by no means certain that we could control its consequences and potentialities for Communist exploitation.” It seemed better to force ”a series of de facto administrative changes via persuasion at high levels, using the U.S. presence ... to force the Vietnamese to get their house in order in one area after another.” In any case, the U.S. could not afford to abandon Vietnam: It would mean losing ”not merely a crucial piece of real estate, but the faith that the U.S. has the will and the capacity to deal with the Communist offensive in that area.”

McNamara, Gilpatric, and the Joint Chiefs now weighed in with recommendations for military steps that went beyond Taylor's. They agreed that the fall of South Vietnam would represent a sharp blow to the United States in Southeast Asia and around the world, and they felt that the likelihood of stopping the communists in Vietnam without the introduction of U.S. forces seemed small. ”A US force of the magnitude of an initial 8-10,000 men-whether in a flood control context or otherwise-will be of great help to Diem. However, it will not convince the other side (whether the shots are called from Moscow, Peiping, or Hanoi) that we mean business.” They urged the president to face ”the ultimate possible extent of our military commitment”: A prolonged struggle requiring six U.S. divisions-a force of about 205,000 men-to counter North Vietnamese and potential Chinese intervention.

Rusk and the State Department were less confident that sending in a ma.s.sive or even limited number of U.S. combat troops made sense. In a memo to the president on November 8, Rusk, McNamara, and the Joint Chiefs recommended a compromise between the competing Taylor, Defense, and State policy recommendations. They agreed that Vietnam's collapse would represent a disaster for the United States, ”particularly in the Orient,” but also at home, where the ”loss of South Vietnam would stimulate bitter domestic controversies in the United States and would be seized upon by extreme elements to divide the country and hara.s.s the Administration.” They also described the chances of preventing Vietnam's collapse without direct U.S. military support as distinctly limited; for the immediate future, however, they were content to endorse Taylor's proposals for a ”limited partners.h.i.+p,” including the reorganization and expansion of MAAG to ensure the fulfillment of cooperative military and political goals.

Despite considerable concern about losing Vietnam, Kennedy was determined to resist the mounting pressure for an overt American military response. In October, he had told New York Times New York Times columnist Arthur Krock that ”United States troops should not be involved on the Asian mainland... . The United States can't interfere in civil disturbances, and it is hard to prove that this wasn't largely the situation in Vietnam.” He told Schlesinger much the same thing. ”They want a force of American troops,” Kennedy said. ”They say it's necessary in order to restore confidence and maintain morale. But it will be just like Berlin. The troops will march in; the bands will play; the crowds will cheer; and in four days everyone will have forgotten. Then we will be told we have to send in more troops. It's like taking a drink. The effect wears off, and you have to take another.” He believed that if the conflict in Vietnam ”were ever converted into a white man's war, we would lose the way the French had lost a decade earlier.” columnist Arthur Krock that ”United States troops should not be involved on the Asian mainland... . The United States can't interfere in civil disturbances, and it is hard to prove that this wasn't largely the situation in Vietnam.” He told Schlesinger much the same thing. ”They want a force of American troops,” Kennedy said. ”They say it's necessary in order to restore confidence and maintain morale. But it will be just like Berlin. The troops will march in; the bands will play; the crowds will cheer; and in four days everyone will have forgotten. Then we will be told we have to send in more troops. It's like taking a drink. The effect wears off, and you have to take another.” He believed that if the conflict in Vietnam ”were ever converted into a white man's war, we would lose the way the French had lost a decade earlier.”

After a private meeting at the White House with the president on November 5, Taylor recorded that Kennedy ”had many questions. He is instinctively against introduction of U.S. forces.” At a ”high-level meeting” scheduled for November 7, Kennedy wanted advisers to a.s.sess the quality of the proposed program, say how it would be implemented, and describe its likely results. He did not ask for a discussion of sending U.S. troops to Vietnam. Indeed, to counter pressure for a substantial military commitment, Kennedy mobilized opposing opinion. Rusk, who faithfully reflected the president's views, responded to the Taylor-JCS proposals for military deployments by favoring more help to the Vietnamese to do their own fighting.

During the first two weeks of November, while Taylor and others argued the case for military commitments, Mike Mansfield, the Senate majority leader and an expert on Asia, Galbraith, George Ball, and Averell Harriman opposed the suggestion in letters and an oral presentation to the president. All four agreed that sending U.S. combat forces to Vietnam carried grave risks. Although they offered no uniform or convincing alternatives for saving Vietnam from communist control, they shared the conviction that putting in American combat units would be a serious error. Mansfield saw ”four possible adverse results: A fanfare and then a retreat; an indecisive and costly conflict along the Korean lines; a major war with China while Russia stands aside; [or] a total world conflict.” At the very least, ”involvement on the mainland of Asia would ... weaken our military capability in Berlin and Germany and ... leave the Russians uncommitted.”

Ball was as emphatic. At a meeting with McNamara and Gilpatric on November 4, he told them how appalled he was at Taylor's proposal for sending U.S. forces to South Vietnam. His two colleagues had no sympathy for his view. Instead, they were ”preoccupied with the single question, How can the United States stop South Vietnam from a Viet Cong takeover? ... The 'falling domino' theory ... was a brooding omnipresence.” During a conversation with the president three days later, Ball told Kennedy that committing American forces to Vietnam would be ”a tragic error.” Like Mansfield, who had wondered where ”an involvement of this kind” would conclude-”in the environs of Saigon? At the 17th parallel? At Hanoi? At Canton? At Peking?”-Ball predicted that ”within five years we'll have three hundred thousand men in the paddies and jungles and never find them again. That was the French experience,” he reminded Kennedy. ”Vietnam is the worst possible terrain both from a physical and political point of view.”

Kennedy agreed, dismissing such involvement as out of the question. ”To my surprise,” Ball remembered, ”the President seemed quite unwilling to discuss the matter, responding with an overtone of asperity: 'George, you're crazier than h.e.l.l. It isn't going to happen.'” Ball later wondered whether Kennedy meant that events would so evolve as not to require escalation or that ”he was determined not to permit such escalation to occur.” Judging from his conversations and actions, Kennedy doubted the wisdom of sending combat troops to fight openly in Vietnam and seemed determined to fend off such a commitment. Avoiding a large conflict on the Asian mainland was a firmly held conviction from which he never departed. Yet at the same time, his compulsion to send in advisers complicated the escalation question.

In preparation for a White House meeting on November 11, Kennedy armed himself with eight questions for his advisers. The first five addressed the central issues under consideration: ”Will this [Taylor's] program be effective without including the introduction of a U.S. troop task force? What reasons shall we give Diem for not acceding to his request for U.S. troops? Under what circ.u.mstances would we reconsider our decision on troops? ... Is the U.S. commitment to prevent the fall of South Vietnam to Communism to be a public act or an internal policy decision of the U.S. Government? [And] to what extent is our offer of help to Diem contingent upon his prior implementation of the reform measures which we are proposing to him?”

After the meeting with Taylor, Rostow, Rusk, McNamara, Lemnitzer, Bobby, and others on the eleventh, Lemnitzer summarized Kennedy's remarks: ”Troops are a last resort. Should be SEATO forces. Will create a tough domestic problem. Would like to avoid statements like Laos & Berlin” that could provoke a confrontation with Moscow. To underscore the president's wishes, Bobby said that a presidential statement on Taylor's report should say, ”We are not sending combat troops. [We are] not committing ourselves to combat troops. Make it [any statement about sending troops] [as] much SEATO as possible.” The coalition aspect to any military intervention was crucial: Kennedy felt the exclusive use of American troops would arouse a public outcry in the United States.

William Bundy, Mac's older brother, who was a.s.sistant secretary of state for East Asia and was at the meeting, believed ”the thrust of the President's thinking was clear-sending organized forces was a step so grave that it should be avoided if this was humanly possible.” Kennedy also resisted making a categorical commitment to saving South Vietnam. The president saw an outright pledge to keep Vietnam out of the communist orbit as unrealistic without a collateral promise to use American military power. So the best course of action seemed to be to make noise about using U.S. military might and even send advisers, but to hold back from a.s.suming princ.i.p.al responsibility for South Vietnam's national security.

Consequently, Kennedy now approved a recommendation that the military prepare contingency plans for the use of U.S. forces ”to signify United States determination to defend South Viet-Nam,” to a.s.sist in fighting the Viet Cong and Hanoi without direct partic.i.p.ation in combat, and to join the fighting ”if there is organized Communist military intervention.” Kennedy, however, remained reluctant to actually initiate any of these plans. In a memo to Rusk and McNamara in preparation for a meeting on November 15, he asked that Taylor's nonmilitary proposals be made more precise and that Harriman's suggestion of negotiations with Moscow on Vietnam be further explored.

At the NSC meeting on the fifteenth, Kennedy ”expressed the fear of becoming involved simultaneously on two fronts on opposite sides of the world. He questioned the wisdom of involvement in Viet Nam since the basis thereof is not completely clear.” Comparing the war in Korea with the conflict in Vietnam, he saw the first as a case of clear aggression and the latter as ”more obscure and less flagrant.” He believed that any unilateral commitment on the part of the United States would produce ”sharp domestic partisan criticism as well as strong objections from other nations.” By contrast with Berlin, Vietnam seemed like an obscure cause that ”could even make leading Democrats wary of proposed activities in the Far East.”

When Lemnitzer warned that a communist victory in Vietnam ”would deal a severe blow to freedom and extend Communism to a great portion of the world,” Kennedy ”asked how he could justify the proposed courses of action in Viet Nam while at the same time ignoring Cuba.” Lemnitzer urged simultaneous steps against Cuba. Kennedy restated doubts about having congressional or public support for U.S. combat troops in Vietnam and concluded the meeting by postponing action until he had spoken with Vice President Johnson and received ”directed studies” from the State Department.

FOR ALL KENNEDY'S RELUCTANCE, international and domestic pressures persuaded him to commit new U.S. resources to Vietnam. Everything he said about Vietnam during the first ten months in office made clear that he doubted the wisdom of expanded involvements in the fighting. But after the defeat at the Bay of Pigs, Khrushchev's uncompromising rhetoric in Vienna, the refusal to fight in Laos, construction of the Berlin Wall, and Soviet resumption of nuclear tests, Kennedy believed that allowing Vietnam to collapse was too politically injurious to America's international standing and too likely to provoke destructive domestic opposition like that over China after Chiang's defeat in 1949. international and domestic pressures persuaded him to commit new U.S. resources to Vietnam. Everything he said about Vietnam during the first ten months in office made clear that he doubted the wisdom of expanded involvements in the fighting. But after the defeat at the Bay of Pigs, Khrushchev's uncompromising rhetoric in Vienna, the refusal to fight in Laos, construction of the Berlin Wall, and Soviet resumption of nuclear tests, Kennedy believed that allowing Vietnam to collapse was too politically injurious to America's international standing and too likely to provoke destructive domestic opposition like that over China after Chiang's defeat in 1949.

Taylor's report had emphasized that the United States could not act too soon to prevent a Vietnamese collapse. He described his recommendations as an ”emergency program which we feel our Government should implement without delay.” Walt Rostow also warned that any delay in helping Saigon would produce ”a major crisis of nerve in Viet-Nam and throughout Southeast Asia. The image of U.S. unwillingness to confront Communism ... will be regarded as definitively confirmed. [Without it,] there will be real panic and disarray.” When Amba.s.sador Frederick Nolting asked permission on November 12 to come home for consultations, Rusk replied, ”We cannot afford inevitable delay” in implementing Taylor's program, which Nolting's absence from Saigon would bring. In the existing circ.u.mstances time was a ”crucial factor.” The sense of urgency about saving Vietnam with a demonstration of greater U.S. support became a pattern by which Was.h.i.+ngton, with too little thought to what lay ahead, incrementally increased its commitments until the conflict had become a major American war.

Although Kennedy would not yet agree to send combat troops to fight Saigon's war, he sent Diem a message on November 15 declaring U.S. readiness ”to join ... in a sharply increased joint effort to avoid a further deterioration in the situation.” He intended to provide additional military equipment and to more than double the twelve hundred American military personnel a.s.sisting the Vietnamese in training and using their armed forces. To rationalize not committing U.S. troops to combat, Kennedy told Diem that ”the mission[s] being undertaken by our forces ... are more suitable for white foreign troops than garrison duty or missions involving the seeking out of Viet Cong personnel submerged in the Viet-Nam population.” It was Kennedy's way of saying, We don't want to fight an Asian land war or to be accused of reestablis.h.i.+ng colonial control over Vietnam.